Andrew Pettie reviews the first episode of the 41st series of the
satirical panel show in which guest host Jack Dee was at his miserable best.

It's easy to forget just how long Have I Got News for You has been chugging along. The first episode aired on 28 September, 1990. Last night the 41st series kicked off with episode 354. Refreshingly for a successful TV show, little has changed on HIGNFY in the intervening 20 years.

Ian Hislop and Paul Merton are still going strong as team captains; the music, title sequence and backdrops have barely been tweaked. The one obvious change to the format is the host. For the first dozen years it was Angus Deayton, who had a nice way with an autocue but was embarrassingly defenestrated after tabloid revelations about his private life.

Since 2002, the show was relied on the extremely variable talents of guests hosts. In that time they've had pretty much everyone on from Brian Blessed to Jo Brand.

Last night, Jack "Deadpan" Dee was back in the hot seat, taking his personal tally as host to 10, just seven appearances behind the all-time leader, Alexander Armstrong. I like Dee enormously as HIGNFY's host, principally because he doesn't try too hard. He also fulfils the Deayton role of taking the wind out of Hislop and Merton's sails where necessary.

The other panellists were BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt and comedian Jon Richardson. Both were amusing rather than hilarious; they understood that their best policy was to give their team captains the limelight and chip in on the few occasions Hislop or Merton paused for breath.

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There were, predictably, lots of jokes at Colonel Gaddafi's expense. Merton neatly summed up Barack Obama's position on Libya: "He's not involved, he's just gone over to complain about the noise." And everyone enjoyed footage of another delightful neologism from Sarah Palin: "squirmish".

The featured publications in the guess-the-headline round were the Daily and Sunday Sport, in tribute to the two "newspapers" which sadly folded last week. This allowed the audience to gasp once again at the Sport's inimitable scoops: "Alien turned my son into a fish finger" and "I lost pet gerbil in my rolls of fat".

The night's biggest running joke was weeping Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. His hypocritical stance on privileged parents getting their children work placements was savaged from all sides. Jon Richardson summarised the general feeling: "He [Clegg] only got his [first] job because of his dad. And he got a free university degree. So now he's eliminating anything he had in case someone else comes along and steals the job that he doesn't really deserve."

There was, however, one interesting omission: any reference to recent events in Japan. Presumably the writers and producers felt that the ongoing tragedy there was too sensitive a subject for satire.

There have been letters published in Ian Hislop's own magazine, Private Eye, debating this issue: one arguing that a cartoon about the Japanese nuclear disaster was in outrageously bad taste, another saying that the magazine had neglected its satirical duty by not making Japan that week's cover story.

It's a tough question: should Hislop, Merton and Dee been making jokes about Japan because it is a major news story (after all, they were happy to poke fun at aspects of the war in Libya) or was HIGNFY wise to steer clear? What do you think?